4 Questions to Ask Before Pitching Your Tabletop Idea at Cons

(image credit Gage Skidmore and used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)

The summer is a busy season for gaming and games makers. Between Origins, Gencon, ComicCon and PAX West there are opportunities to interact with hundreds of thousands of potential customers and fans for your tabletop project. But before you dive in make sure you’ve considered the following questions:

What kind of presence do you want to have at the con?

Cons can be expensive just to attend, especially if you are not local. Between the cost of entry, hotel, food and travel things can pile up quickly. And that’s just if you want to attend and walk around. 

Obviously you can take the approach or just showing up with your idea and trying to have serendipitous conversations with attendees, but this approach is less likely to net you the kind of attention and interest that you are hoping to garner. But it is cheap! 

The other end of the spectrum is getting a booth in the exhibitors’ hall. This is pricey and requires planning in advance to get your booth registration in, but it puts you in a place where you are not only going to get a lot of traffic, but also potentially space to demo your product.  

If you want to look at options that fall between these two consider the following:

  -Seeing if the Con has some sort of track or space for new creators.

- Reaching out to companies that you think may be interested to see if they are accepting pitches

- Setting up in open play spaces or other free to use spaces that are high traffic.

- Partnering with another company to share a booth space.

Are you looking to self-produce your idea or are you looking to partner with an established company?

Either way is viable for most projects, and depending on the type of product or service you are looking to develop, it may be easier to go solo as opposed to finding a partner. 

Factors like anticipated production run, complexity and/or cost of components and intended audience can all factor into this decision.   

If you are considering self-production you may want to consider speaking to other creator-owned operations and gain insights. Many cons also now offer a track for potential creators that organizes these sorts of Q&A session or arrange mentorship opportunities. 

If you are looking for a partner to develop your idea then you need to come prepared. Be able to let them know that you’ve done your research and understand things like cost per unit, production timelines and what work will still need to be done to bring the idea to market if they decide to partner with you.

What is your intended audience?

Many cons are so large that it is impossible to see it all, and if you’re there trying to pitch something you need to structure your time carefully to make sure you’re getting the most out of the experience. 

Depending on the kind of idea you are hoping to develop you will want to try to find where ‘your people’ will be hanging out. Because of the size of major cons different activities will often be scattered across several different hotels, convention spaces or local establishments. 

You want to be around the people who are your likely audience so that you can both discuss your idea with them, but also see what are the ideas and products that they are excited about and how you might be able to incorporate or innovate on them yourself.

Finally, are the people who are likely to be your target audience even present at the convention? If you are looking to produce an actual play is there any representation by AP folks at the con? It may not be worth your time and money to attend a con to promote your project if there are minimal opportunities to promote or engage with people who can help your project.  

Do you have your pitch baked or are you still innovating?

This can mean several things, depending on where you are in the development process. 

At a minimum you need to have an ‘elevator pitch’ explaining the core concept, why it’s cool and why you’re the person who can do it. 

A step up from this would be to have a working prototype/demo that you can use to show off the concept and generate more interest. 

At the far end of the preparation would be having a full business plan in addition to the demo that breaks down things like production costs, per unit price, marketing and retail strategy. 

Finally, and not a question, but when you’re taking a project out into the wild and soliciting feedback, learn to take that feedback, even when it’s negative.

Believe me when I tell you that the vast majority of people you will meet in the industry want you to succeed. But industry veterans are often going to offer feedback that isn’t sugar coated. When someone offers feedback, especially if it is negative feedback, learn to pick the constructive bits and don’t focus on the negatives. 

It is hard to ‘make it’ in the tabletop industry. Even with the proliferation of gaming in recent years it is still difficult to make a living solely off of the tabletop industry and anyone who has been in and around the industry for any amount of time has seen more failures than success. They likely have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t, so when they offer criticism it is with the knowledge of what has and has not worked before in their experience.